


Underwater in the Dark

by The_Mouse_of_Anon



Series: AquaFan Week (Devilfish Ahoy!) [3]
Category: Teen Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: AquaFan Week 2016, Day 3: Magic, Eddie bantering when most people would be more focused on being in pain, Eddie's pain tolerance is frightening, La'gaan is actually a really skilled magic-user, M/M, even La'gaan is surprised, pre-Devilfish, seriously Eddie what the hell is your pain tolerance?, tw blood, tw injury, underwater cave in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9238865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Mouse_of_Anon/pseuds/The_Mouse_of_Anon
Summary: It was a cave-in. La’gaanhatedcave-ins. He especially hated cave-ins when he happened to beinsideand said cave was underwater while one of his teammates who could only breatheairhappened to be with him. And if that wasn't enough, Eddie had gotten partially buried.((Written for Day 3 of AquaFan Week 2016.))





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another pre-Devilfish fic! (I'm complete Devilfish trash. lol) Timeline-wise, this one takes place somewhere between _Family Holidays Aren't All They're Cracked Up To Be_ and _Tattoos: A Conversation_.

It was a cave-in. La’gaan _hated_ cave-ins. He especially hated cave-ins when he happened to be _inside_ and said cave was underwater while one of his teammates who could only breathe _air_ happened to be with him. As it was they were lucky that they’d managed to make it to an air-pocket before half the tunnel had tried to come crashing down on them. La’gaan’s reaction had been instantaneous the moment he heard the first rumble of shifting rock— stabilizing the stone around the air pocket and reinforcing the air bubble through two rapid-fire spells that he had cast almost before he could think. He had surprised himself with that, and once the rock had finally stopped shifting he had turned his attention to the other member of the team who was with him— which led to La’gaan helping Eddie unbury one of his legs and his tail.

“Ow, ow, ow, ohhhh _fuck_ OW,” Eddie hissed as La’gaan pried up a rock enough for him to pull his foot free. Fortunately Eddie’s eyes were glowing brightly enough to cast plenty of light to see by, making it easier for La’gaan to keep him from getting hurt worse.

“Just a couple more,” La’gaan said.

“Yeah, just… sooner’s better than later, you know? OWWW… Mmmm… When we get out of here, remind me to set Kaldur’s father on fire. Especially his stupid beard and eyebrows.” He winced as La’gaan freed the end of his tail and forcefully dragged himself on top of part of the pile so he was out of the water.

La’gaan gave an amused snort of laughter before following Eddie up. “I’d pay to see that.”

“5,000 fish an eyebrow? Or is there some other form of fishy Atlantean currency I don’t know about?” Eddie said before wincing as he accidentally put weight on his injured foot. “ _Shit_. Okay. OW. _Really_ hope that’s not broken.”

La’gaan crouched next to him to get a better look and involuntarily winced. It wasn’t often that Eddie even got bruised (he was far more durable than your typical surfacer) but the way his ankle and foot were edging toward black didn’t look good. He wasn’t sure if the slickness he could see was due to the fact that Eddie was drenched or something else, and he wasn’t about to ask Eddie to contort himself so he could aim the glow from his eyes in the direction of his ankle. For a moment the tattoos on La’gaan’s shoulders glowed as he cast another spell, muttering a brief word of Atlantean, causing a blue orb of light to blink into existence over his left shoulder.

“Well that’s not normal,” Eddie said in another attempt at humor despite his pain.

“Shut up. I’m trying to get a better look.”

“Oh, so I’m not hallucinating from pain. Okay. Good to know.”

“Whatever, fish-guts-for-brains. Even with the extra light I’m having a hard time getting a good look,” La’gaan grumbled. The way Eddie’s skin around the area was blackening was making him nervous, but he didn’t want to outright admit it.

Eddie tried to take a look, hissed when his leg screamed with pain at him for the movement, and then outright snarled in pain when he made the mistake of trying to brace himself with his tail so he could maneuver to get a better look—because oh yes, he’d temporarily forgotten his tail had been hurt too. “ _Fffffuuuuuuu_ …” He bit off the end of the word before he could finish it. After a moment or two he asked, “Am I bleeding? I feel like I’m bleeding.”

La’gaan blinked, looked back to Eddie’s ankle and frowned. “…Didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I can’t really tell.”

Eddie forced himself to let out a long slow breath before he spoke again. “So fun thing that I might not have mentioned before. My blood’s black.”

La’gaan stared at Eddie in disbelief. “You’re officially the weirdest meta I’ve ever met.”

“Okay, smartass fish. I get that I’m weird as hell. Am I bleeding or not?” Really, it was amazing that Eddie could still try to be as snarky and playful as usual even when he was obviously in a great deal of pain.

Now that La’gaan had a better idea of what he was looking at, he was able to make better sense of what he was seeing. “Definitely bleeding.”

“ _Shit_.”

Placing a hand on Eddie’s shin, above the injury, La’gaan concentrated— focusing his magic and using what knowledge of healing magic he had to gently explore the injury. It wasn’t something La’gaan tended to bring up, being that he preferred focusing on being a brawler rather than rampantly using his magic, but he was actually reasonably skilled in healing magics. In fact, it had been one of his primary areas of study, driven by the practical awareness that with as many fights as he got into it was necessary knowledge to have. When he was done with the exploration of Eddie’s shin and foot he let his focus shift to the fire-wielder’s injured tail. Not as serious as the other injury, but unpleasant enough.

“You’ve got a clean break in your shin-bone, though at least it’s aligned. A few stress-fractures in your ankle and the arch of your foot. The other bone in your leg somehow avoided getting snapped. A couple bones in your tail are dislocated with about three seriously fractured.”

“Well damn,” Eddie said with a clear wince. “That’s me not running for at least a week.” Eddie and his damned healing factor… Sometimes La’gaan couldn’t help but think that Eddie was going to get shot one day and he wouldn’t take it seriously enough due to the fact that he healed abnormally fast. “Though I’ve gotta ask, when the heck did you being a medic become a thing?”

“Back at the Conservatory— this is gonna hurt,” La’gaan answered just before carefully coiling some of his magic around Eddie’s dislocated vertebrae to yank them back into place.

“ _Mother of—!_ ” Eddie seethed in pain for several moments, one hand up near his mouth and in such a tight fist that he could feel his claws biting into his palm.

“—just in case situations like this happened,” La’gaan said, finishing his thought.

Once Eddie’s pain ebbed some, he said, “A little warning next time! _Shit!_ …OW that hurt…”

La’gaan gave him an unimpressed look. “If I had given you any more warning than that, you would’ve tensed up, which could have screwed it up worse.”

“Freaking sadistic as hell,” Eddie complained.

“Not sadistic. Just trying to get you to a point where we can get the hell out of here without risking you becoming shark bait.” For a moment he considered leaving it at that, but if he couldn’t give in to the temptation to snark at Eddie then it would be like admitting how dangerous the situation was. “Not that you weren’t setting yourself up to be shark bait before getting half-buried, but bleeding in the water would pretty much be like advertising yourself on a plate.”

Eddie barked out a laugh. “Somehow I doubt it. The way my blood smells, I don’t think any shark with even half a mind would be interested. Probably a good idea whenever we get back in the water, if I’m still bleeding: don’t breathe that.”

La’gaan snorted. He didn’t know if Eddie was just being cocky or— _‘Okay, nevermind. Nothing in nature smells like that.’_ The closest comparable smell that he could think of was gasoline. It was faint, enough so that he hadn’t initially noticed it, but now that he noticed it was impossible to ignore. “…I don’t think I want to even know why your blood smells like that.”

“Genetic fluke?” Eddie offered weakly. Clearly La’gaan had unintentionally hit on one of the many things Eddie didn’t like talking about.

Rather than pursue it, La’gaan brought his focus back to Eddie’s leg and foot. Stitching together the bones enough to be reasonably stable so they could move would take some doing, but Eddie trying to swim with a broken leg would only aggravate the damage. As he worked the spell, coiling magic around bone to stabilize as he encouraged threads of bone to seal the gaps and wounds to close, he couldn’t help but notice that healing Eddie was more difficult than it should be. There was something off, some tweak of Eddie’s _being_ that made him more slippery to La’gaan’s healing magic than he should be. No time to think or worry about it. And besides, he’d already cast four or five spells while maintaining at least two of them; that sort of rapid-fire spell-casting was exhausting. It could easily be that the slippery quality he felt was nothing more than magic-strain. And considering the fact that La’gaan felt magic-strain so rarely…

Shoving his thoughts aside as he removed his hand, La’gaan asked, “Think you can get around with your leg now?” The healing wasn’t perfect, but at least it was enough to stabilize.

Eddie cautiously put some weight on it, hissed, but said, “I should be able to manage. At least well enough to get the hell out of here.”

La’gaan motioned with a jerk of the head back to the water. “Then let’s get going, shark bait. Or maybe considering the way your blood smells I should be calling you ‘shark repellent’.”

The injured fire-wielder snickered as he scooted off the edge of the rock. “You know, just for that I’m going to completely ruin your reputation.”

“Really?” La’gaan scoffed as he followed Eddie into the water.

“Sure. I’ll ruin your reputation that you’re only a brawler and make sure that the rest of the team knows that you know healing magic. It’d complete destroy any belief in you being an anti-social grouch,” he grinned.

La’gaan rolled his eyes. “Just shut up and be ready to swim.” Eddie laughed outright. Despite himself, La’gaan couldn’t quite keep the amused smile from his face. “Only you could get a broken leg and still be able to laugh.”

“And whose fault is it for giving me reasons to laugh?”

“Shut up already.”


End file.
